SEVEN of my poems appear throughout this novel, six of them original to this book.

I fell in love with Charles Templeton’s Vietnam War novel, Boot, even before I was asked to add a few poems to the story. What I read was a pretty complete early manuscript. Actually, what I loved most about it were the various characters who brought the story to life.

Long-haired G.O. Hill leaves his home in south Texas to join the Marine Corps and all-too-quickly finds himself in a helicopter unit based at the Hue-Phu Bai Airport. As crew chief on a big CH-46D helicopter he sees lots of action involving frequently flying into areas of heavy fighting to extract wounded or sometimes slain Marines.

This is one of those books that unwinds in a satirical fashion, and takes a nearly non-stop approach at using humor to try to deal with and make sense of all the craziness taking place. In fact, one of the characters is a one-eyed cockroach that occasionally comments on the action. There were several pages where I actually caught myself laughing out loud.

It’s also a testosterone-fueled story that is often irreverent, frequently becomes scatological, and has several hallucinatory episodes that will in more than one instance remind the reader of parts of William Burrough’s Naked Lunch.

No one is called by their actual name as G.O. serves alongside such men as Bugman, Duck Butter, Scrotum, and Sugar Bear. The action takes place during the months after the major Tet Offensive in the critical year of 1968.

There are a few chapters where we also get to know pretty well a couple of members of the Vietnamese military forces fighting against the Americans.

Templeton’s novel, though, isn’t really about the Vietnam War, or the times, or the country of Vietnam. It’s about the men on both sides who literally risked everything for a cause they hoped was right, driven by a desire to survive, and a love for the men who shared danger with them at every turn.

After reading the manuscript I was delighted, no, thrilled to be asked to find a few places where poems written by me could seem to fit naturally into the story. Charles and I ended up adding seven of my poems to his tale, six of them are original to this book. — Bill McCloud, Author of The Smell of the Light